The Cold Insincerity of Steel Machines
by Harey
Summary: A technician with something of a conscience ponders his actions and whether they may be justified.  Explores the theme expressed in Cube Zero of how others blame their actions on orders of higher authority, such as God, and the regression of human society


**AN: Hello there. Lucky seven? Hopefully? I don't really expect much feedback, since this fandom is SO small, but at least there's a category for it...But I am very proud of this fanfiction; it is more intricate and indeed very different overall, from my Holly Black fics. There are several references to Cube Zero, so if you've only seen Cube you may not understand some of it...I tried to use footnotes and probably failed. Well...enjoy.**

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_"It'll show your mind_

_That you have a mind"--_

"U-Fig" by System of a Down

The nameless technician, known only as 01367, squinted up at the screen that encompassed the wall and popped yet another caffeine pill to battle his consistently rising fatigue. He'd learned to swallow them dry long ago.

He tapped frantically at the tiny keyboard, entering little codes that were fed through the computer into the actual Cube walls; he clicked on tiny boxes of torture options and assigned them to the rooms, immune to the echoing screams and rotting flesh decaying in the complex, metallic labyrinth. Here, he was safe. Here he was safe and dry and whole and sane.

_Self-preservation. That's what today's world is all about._

He shook his head once, sharply, to rid it of the voice, to keep it comfortably empty. _Don't go thinking, now, or you'll open the door to all kinds of trouble. Ideas are dangerous things._

"Will you shut _up_?" He shouted aloud to the dark, empty room.

No.

This was his punishment.

He blinked and resumed his tapping.

_You're a bright young man; you'll go far in this business if you learn to keep your mouth shut and follow orders._

"I _am_ following orders."

_DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOD?_

He feared to speak the answer aloud, lest they come and drag him away into the maze, only to be asked the question again and be met with fire. _But cowards who turn back from following me, and those who are unfaithful to me. . .Their doom is in the Lake that burns with fire and sulphur. This is the Second Death.#For those who had been through the Cube had already endured a sort of death._

And the regulators of the Cube thought themselves to be a single God. Don't appease them with blind worship, and they will drag you into Hell.  
Who were they, anyway; what were their motives? This was the first time the technician had dared to wonder such things, to really think about them. But something told him he was far too deep in this to back out now. Or anytime, for that matter.

He had heard bone-chilling rumors of workers who began to question their surroundings being thrown into the Cube, and when they got out, undergoing lobotomies and being thrust back into it again, mentally impaired. There was no escape. Death was the only release from service to the Cube.  
But it was better to know, to resist and suffer, than to mindlessly aid brutal, cold-blooded killers.

Wasn't it?

Morally so, yes. But when one got right down to it..

Was it?

If one was perfectly honest, a sense of right and wrong had become more and more scarce as time wore on. In fact, it had fallen into a category of useless, obsolete values that modern "sensible" people no longer even understood the meaning of.

Now people seemed to associate a man's worthy by the way he followed orders, by this blind faith in authority. Once dependability in that area was established, then he was judged on how well he could take care of himself. Self-sacrifice was a crucial error, and if one chanced to make it, there would be disastrous consequences.

Finally, as the third and highest test of true value to the "good of humanity", the man would be expected to rise above the common people and govern them, even if that included sacrificing the well-being and possibly even the lives of countless individuals. For that was what great leaders did, was it not?

Yes, the values of modern society were decidedly ironic, even contradictory, the technician decided. Had no one realized this before?

Suddenly, the surprisingly rusty, low-tech rotary telephone resting on the desk beside him began its shrill, fearsome chime. His blood stilled in his veins. He did not wish to answer the call of the "higher ups", but he feared their retaliation, lest they apprehend his suspicious nature and seek to "correct" it, as they say; yet another polite euphemism for ineffable sin that rolled so sweetly from their near-imaginary tongues.

"H-hello?" he answered, the cool, slick hand that gripped the phone shaking uncontrollably.

"01367, please come up. Thank you." Dead air hung still, the cool, virtually automated voice of the authority figure ringing ominously within it.

01367 stepped obediently out of the sliding metal doors barring the way out from the prisonlike structure they called an "office", into the world of strangely glowing lights and the threat of hovering administration. He stepped into the fabled elevator, knowing for certain it was the last time he would ever see the beloved familiarity of tangled wires and dilapidated metal, of dials and knobs and the whirr and clang of equipment.

When the pointer finally reached the level labeled "UP", 01367 had already resigned himself to dull lifelessness as the he became engulfed in white and the sharp, sterile tang of disinfectant, as the bitingly cold needle slid with delightfully graceful ease into his vein.

"01367, formerly known by a complete set of three names which has been stripped of him, due to his voluntary service in the Association of Criminal and Civilian Government and Management, has been convicted of the following crimes against his country and his god:

"1.) Sedition of the highest order, specifically intent to release invaluable information to the public, as observed by the Regulatory Body of Mental Censorship, at approximately three A.M. on the 137th week of the Year 23 of our Ruling Order of Dominion .

"2.) Willful refusal to comply with the regulations specifically stating the duty of an employee of the Association of Criminal and Civilian Government and Management to conceal the deliberations of the government from members of public.

"These crimes are filed under the most disgraceful category of Noncompliance of the Law, and shall be treated as such:

"You, 01367, shall be sentenced to a complete frontal lobotomy, as well as release into the Experimental Chamber of Criminal Judgment, where, should you emerge with your life intact, shall undergo intensive interrogation and subsequent further sentencing."

01637 could tell that the doctor's eyes glinted with the dull glaze of malice as he intoned the words druggedly from behind his little white mask.

_This won't hurt a bit..._

01367 slid painlessly into oblivion, never again to resurface with a fully functional mind, having finally found it at last.


End file.
